Lords And Ladies (2.15)

Out of some sheer, deep, incomprehensible instinct, Dante stares at Mindy like a wide-eyed deer, turns, and runs straight into the door.

He awakens several minutes later, Mindy still gazing down at him from the desk.  He sits up, rubbing his head.  “Ow.”

“I thought you were going to stop doing that,” says Mindy, with a giggle.  Various images pass through Dante’s head, ones he doesn’t entirely understand:  A captive female mantis ripping off the head of a male.  A male black widow fleeing from a female.  A male honeybee’s reproductive organs exploding.

“...Dante, are you alright?  You had a weird expression on your face for a moment there.”

“Oh, just...” Stay down, whispers a voice in his head, making him pause.   The fact that it sounds just like him doesn’t make him any more comfortable.

“Huh?”  Mindy’s face switches to genuine concern.

“Just surprised me, is all.”  Remain supplicant.  Expose your belly.  Be as the male Hy’Zog is.

Dante wrenches his face up in confusion.  “Mindy, can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” she says, hopping off the desk and kneeling down.

“Do you have any idea what the hell a male Hy’Zog is?”

“None,” says Mindy.  “Why?”

HYENAS.  Hyena.  That was the word we were thinking of.

Dante groans and stands up slowly, Mindy helping him.  She kisses the top of his head.

“Heheheh, I got you a little too good that time,” she says, patting him on the back  She leads him over to his desk, letting him sit down.

“No, no, my fault, I shouldn’t have bolted.”    He rubs his head for a moment.  At least the voice has shut up.  Probably a side effect of the head injury.  Though his head doesn’t hurt all that much...

She whispers in his ear.  “Did you find the thing?”

“What thing?”

“The thing I left you.  The stupid thing.”

“Huh?”

Mindy pouts for a moment.  “Open the bottom right drawer.”

Dante looks down for a moment, before carefully looking down and opening the drawer.

He takes out a couple of photos.

He stares at them for a moment.

His cheeks turn red and he shoves them back in the drawer, closing them.

Mindy looks hurt.  “Are you that sickened by my body?  It’s a perfectly good body.  I like my body.”

Dante winces with embarrassment.  “You do!  I just need to work,” he says, still not...entirely comfortable with Mindy.  “A lot of paperwork to look over and fill, a lot of commissions coming in...”

“...So you’ll stare at them later, right?”

“Yes.  Fine.”

***

“I’m bored,” says Mindy, from the floor as Dante reads through another bit of paperwork.

“I’m sorry.”

“Aren’t you bored?”

“No.  Did you bring your games?”

“...No.”

“...Why not?”

“...Didn’t think about it.”

Dante’s eyes bulge out of their sockets like a man who has seen Death.  “...Okay, what’s wrong?  What’s going on?”

“Well...” starts Mindy, but before she can respond someone kicks the door open.   The force propels it open, not hard and fast, but slow and leisurely.

A pale woman covered in engine grease leans against the door frame, with a soft smile.  She props one foot up on the other side of the door frame, displaying long legs of which she is incredibly proud.  They are presently clad in tennis shoes and short shorts.  A toolbelt is wrapped around her waist.  Her top exposes her arms, but is not especially revealing.  Her hair is a vivid but dyed black, currently in a ponytail.

Dante blushes and pushes his shades up his nose.  The woman steps in the room, kicking the door closed with a foot.  She sways as she approaches Dante.  He opens his mouth to warn her, but she puts her finger to her lips to shush him and steps forward.

She promptly hits Mindy and stumbles forward, hitting the desk and slumping over, her face landing in Dante’s paperwork.

“...Are you both okay?” asks Dante, slowly.  “Oreo?  Mindy?”

The new person - Oreo, Dante’s ‘favorite’ employee - turns her head back to look at Mindy, who sits up and looks back at her.

“Are you alright?” asks Oreo, quickly.

“Don’t mind me,” says Mindy, cheerfully.  “Continue with what you were going to do.”

Oreo looks between Mindy and Dante.  “Was I interrupting something...?  I can just come back after work.”

“Nonono, I don’t mind.  Can I take pictures?  And notes?”

“What?”

Dante shuffles his paperwork with shaky hands.  “Oreo, this is Mindy.  My...wife.”

Oreo glances back at him.  “You have a wife?  I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“And most of my dates don’t know I have a husband,” says Mindy.

“...And Mindy, this is Oreo.  One of my employees.”

“I know,” says Mindy.  “I saw her when I snuck in here the other day.  I already knew you were,” Mindy makes a rude gesture with her arms and hips.  “Bangin’.”  She turns to Dante.  “An employee, huh?  Scandalous.  I like it.  I like the legs too.”

“I didn’t hire her for her legs,” says Dante, adamantly.  “We just got talking about machinery, and things...Happened.  And now I’m her newest boyfriend.”

“Apparently geektalk gets his piston pumping,” says Oreo, grinning and patting Dante’s head.  “You’re just a big old gangly nerd underneath all of that pretty boy and makeup and lingerie, aren’t you?”

“Eheheheh, guilty as charged...You’re still not getting a big raise though, yet.  I have to stay impartial.”  Dante pushes his glasses up and shuffles his paperwork again.  Oreo rolls her eyes.

“Wait,” says Mindy.  “She’s the newest one, right?”

“Yeah?” says Dante.

Mindy begins murmuring.  “Isabella, Meb, Neko, Tara, and now Oreo...That’s all five.  Ha!” Mindy shakes with enthusiasm, a little ball of energy.  “I’ve met them all!”

“She gets really excited about the strangest things,” explains Dante.

“You keep shuffling that pile of papers,” says Oreo.

“...I know.”

The door opens again.  Tara walks in, now in slacks, a collared shirt, and a lack of lipstick.  She’s holding four small styrofoam food containers, no doubt container a cake of some sort purchased nearby.  “Hey, Dante.  Oreo. ...Mindy,” says Tara, her tone and enthusiasm dropping on the last one.  She sets the food down on Dante’s desk, takes a folding chair from a corner closet and sets it by him before kicking off her heels and sitting down.  “I brought a snack”

“Hey, Rocky,” says Dante.  “How was your performance?”

“Exhausting. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” says Dante, taking his container from the stack.  Mindy and Oreo grab them too, and then look in the closet.

“How did you know to bring enough for them?”

“Well, Oreo works here.  And Mindy tends to show up uninvited.  I made a lucky guess.”

“Heh.”

The phone by his desk rings.  He sighs, picking it up.

“You’ve reached Auto Inferno, the city’s foremost car modification and robot construction shop.  This is Lord Dante speaking, how may we serve you today?”

“She’s going to die,” says a woman’s voice.

Dante’s heart stops for a moment.  He rolls his chair away a little, whispering.  “Who is this?”

“Dante,” says Oreo.  “There are no chairs.”

“Can I sit on your lap?” asks Mindy.

“We could both sit on his lap,” says Mindy.

“That sounds complicated.  We might fall off.  You could sit on my lap, and I could sit on his.”

“I’m not that into your lap.”

“It’s a perfectly good lap.”

Tara rolls her eyes.

“The man who passed yo on the stairs this morning.  He’s going to kill the Librarian.”

“Are you sure?  Who is this?”

“Just thought you would like to know, mi amor.  Rendez-vous de l'autre côté.”   The phone clicks off.

“So, Dante.  Lap?”  asks Oreo, as Dante begins furiously tapping out the Library’s phone number.

“Huh?” says Dante.

“Mindy or I.  Lap.  Which one?”

“Sure, sure. Excuse me, sorry,” says Dante, putting the phone back to his ear.  Come on, come on, pick up...

“Hello, this is the Library,” says Kitty’s voice on the phone, calmly. “Duchess Lady Ki-”

“Kitty!” hisses Dante.

“...Dante?  Uh, hi, what is it...?”

“Look, we need to talk somewhere.  Something very strange has happened.”

There is a long, uncomfortable pause. In the middle Oreo and Mindy awkwardly sit on either leg, trying not to fall off.

“I’ll call you back later, Dante,” she says abruptly, hanging up.

“Kitty!  Shit.”

“Eh?” asks Tara.  “What happened?”

“Is Kitty all right?” asks Mindy.

“Kitty?  You mean the Librarian?” says Oreo.

“I don’t know,” says Dante. “We had a strange phone ca-”

“Boss,” says the voice of Roxanne Wolf from the door.  Roxanne as the de facto second in command of the business, and Dante’s other favorite employee in a way that didn’t involve quotation marks.  Dante wasn’t her type, which here means that he wasn’t a well constructed piece of machinery.  He was, however, her brother’s type, which considered a shame considering Richard was not Dante’s type.  Dante could appreciate an attractive person of any gender, but he had trouble with body parts belonging to certain biological sexes.

“Yes, miss Wolf, what is it?”

“There’s a package here for you,” she says, popping her gum. “You should probably go see it now.”

“I’m a little busy-”

“We literally can’t keep working until you do.”

“...What?  Why?”

“You’ll see.”

***

Everyone, employee and guest both, gathers around it, as it takes up a good chunk of the garage floor.  It’s a massive, dark wooden crate with no markings other than a small note attached to one side.

“...Okay, I see what you mean,” says Dante, as one of his employees  - a dark haired, tall, thin, handsome and usually impeccably well-dressed man named Andrej Adler - takes the note off of the crate, handing it to him.

“Thank you, Adler.  Hmm.”  He reads the note.

We can’t do anything with this Grimoire, so we’re giving it to you.  Feel free to return it to the Library.  Love, Levesque.

“...Who the hell is Levesque?” murmurs Dante.  He points at the crate.  “Open it up.  Let’s see what’s actually in there.”

His employees grab tools, prying the wooden crate apart until the contents are at least revealed.

Dante walks up to it, looking it over.

It’s big, big enough to fit a dead body inside with space left over.  It’s wide.  It has the texture of sandstone.  A carved out visage of a dead woman lays on the top, arms folded, headdress atop her head.  On her chin rests a traditional pointy Pharoah’s beard.

It is a sarcophagus, but that isn’t the strangest part.

The strangest part is the cat face.